Cumberland University - Phoenix Yearbook (Lebanon, TN)

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IZZ ' y s A GREATER CUMBERLAND IHOSE Cumberlanders who have been so intensely interested in the history, growth, and development of our University have probably gone so far as to delve into the dark and dusty archives of her past achievements, and have doubtless discovered some rather startling facts. In order to have a deeper and more profound appreciation of Cum- berland, it is very necessary that we become acquainted with her remark- able advancement. Any student with a vivid imagination is able to picture in his mind the commanding figure of an early visionist and the grayed-old self-effacing building of tender memories which stand watch, like twin sen- tinels, watching the uncounted days and numberless throngs of students hurry onward to the day of the greater school of their dreams. Out of the small material beginnings of a tiny Cumberland there has slowly grown the mighty and all-powerful institution that we know to-day. Through the melting years, inspired and guided by the far-reaching minds of our first fathers, splendid accomplishments and achievements have been attained and have followed one another in rather close succession. Into the ambient campus and the OLD, but newer, structures there has been builded the skeleton and framework of a high tradition, of a huge zeal, of a never-ceasing will to accomplish greater and even greater things for Cumberland. Through the long period of constant development there has been created and breathed into the mind of the University a strong desire to end advance and development only at the never-to-be-attained summit and pinnacle of perfection. Even so has it been with the great master builders of all history. Springing from their unfaltering quest of goals, perched high in the glistening mountains of ambition, has come their most precious contribution — the lesson of a stern spiritualism and a better phase of moral and social life admixed with a firm will to attain. Of such a leg- acy was born the Cumberland University that is to-day ; from that same source will be derived the material to make possible our newer dream — The Greater Cumberland. A Greater Cumberland ! Greater in distinction of faculty, greater in facilities for work, greater in service — to a portrayal of that ideal, the aim and purpose fostered and advocated by Cumberland since the time of her inception by those strong minds and stanch hearts and souls of our fathers, we must now and forever dedicate and consecrate our lives and work. Many elements must enter into the composition of a truly greater school. Material surroundings play a vital and very important part in the efficiency of a school, but the fact must never be forgotten that they are 4 . . y ik f f ..

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THE PHOENIX Published by THE STUDENTS of CUMBERLAND UNIVERSITY 1927 VOLUME XXXI I

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Tz: ivr y merely one portion of the whole scheme of the ideal campus and university environment. Faculty and student body are inseparable constituent parts of another requisite phase of our educational advancement. In the faculty there must be vision, sympathy, and the ability to understand, to inspire, and to lead ; in the student body, intellectual curiosity, sincerity, and ear- nestness of purpose. Permeating all these more tangible factors must be a strong belief in service, the leaven necessary to the most fruitful and pro- ductive mixture of concrete materials, if the spiritual apex of the welding which will make ultimately real the Greater Cumberland of our dreams is to be attained. Far in the past that has been so indelibly recorded, more real in memory than in fact, huddles the small Cumberland that was the forerunner and herald of our present University. On in the distant future, dimly outlined behind the misty and almost impenetrable veil that shields us from our fates, rises the towering and commanding Cumberland of the days to come. And we, m idway between the dim past and the equally misty and dim future, strain forward eagerly as we reach for the goal of further at- tainment. We remember the past because of its pulsing wishes which must be lifted high and carried on, because it is the inspirational dare and challenge to continued effort and labor. The future, a volume whose end- less pages of weeks and days glow and are made brilliant with opportunity, is before us ; and at our hand lies in readiness the magic pen of vision, the mighty instrument of construction. It is for us to see that we shall have written and wrought well; that the gleaming outlines of projected struc- tures, real now only to those who dwell in thought beyond the veil of mist, shall to-morrow be our lasting monuments in the quick-receding past. Cumberland gives every one of her sons and daughters a proud heritage. The blood of men and women, famed and renowned in the intellectual world, has been poured forth for us in order that we might enjoy the so great privilege of the glory in the search for knowledge and wisdom. Unto our minds is given some semblance of soothing intelligence ; our souls are fed from the storehouse which harbors the sweetest and most nourishing viands of spiritual sustenance; then to us is given the torch of our fathers, handed down in trust. It is for us to carry on and to uphold the confidence and trust so implicitly placed in us. ..